Post offices in New York are very different from the ones where I come from. Let me get that straight, first and foremost. So when I walked into the post office today and attempted to mail my package, I had every right to be confused - things just don't look the same up here. There was a woman standing in front of the counter who motioned me forward, telling me to go to a specific window. Between me and the postal service worker, there's a large sheet of glass, and I can only just barely hear her on the other side. But the woman wasn't really trying to talk, she was just motioning at me and pointing at the package. "Raise the gate," the woman nearby said, and I managed to figure out what she was talking about before looking like too much of a dumbass. Beside the part of the counter that you talk through, there's another sheet of glass that's basically a double gate - I put my package inside, and on being motioned to do so, shut my gate, and the employee then opened her side and weighed the package, took it away and shut her gate again. This is like some sort of medieval system with gates and pulleys, and to top it all off, I practically had to throw all my weight against my gate. So strange.
Before the transaction proper was done, though, the woman in front of the counter said something about building muscle while in the post office. I laughed, and, playing the Little Southern Girl Card, offered the explanation that I wasn't from here, and this was completely different from my home. "They don't have bullet-proof glass in South Carolina?" the woman asked, smiling wryly. Not exactly. I asked her if it was necessary, or if it was more just a precaution (wondering a little, too, whether the postal workers needed protection or whether it might be vice-versa), and I thought her answer was actually really profound. She shrugged and said, "it's just New York."
I got called a troublemaker by the bartender at Cafe Perch today, which was absolutely hilarious. Joe and I struck up a pretty easy friendship when he realized that he was going to see a lot of me, and that I was probably going to tip pretty well. At some point today, after talking a lot of shit about the guy who calls in a smoothie order to go (and nothing else) and then sits out front to drink it, I guess I felt comfortable enough to say something in jest, to which he turns around and responds, "Rachel, you're a troublemaker. I see that now." I got quite a kick out of that.
I've sent a number of e-mails over the last few days to various Craigslist ads, and I'm just hoping something sticks. I've gone back in to check on submitted resumes, to no avail, and now I almost feel like my hands are tied. Maybe I'm not going about this the right way - is there some way to get a job quickly and easily in New York? I was told today to look into a temp agency, a totally novel concept to me. Small steps.
I also shot footage of the play tonight, which was also a very new experience for me. The camera was fixed, but changing the iris, the focus, the pan and the zoom from scene to scene, attempting to make it fluid but knowing that this was essentially B-roll, put me in a state of intense uncertainty. Any time I'm given a task to do, but not given any real direction for how to do it, I get nervous, and this was no exception. I don't think I did a bad job - not like there are real standards to it - but I have little or no way of knowing until I'm handed a chunk of footage and asked to edit it.
Uncertainty: something you just have to learn to deal with in life. That uncomfortable feeling of not-knowing and not-knowing if you'll know anytime soon . . . it's a hard place for me to be in, being accustomed as I am to things being stable, unquestioned. Although I can't quite explain why, Metric's "Too Little Too Late" really struck home today - the lyrics don't singularly convey the melancholy energy of the song, and I'm too removed from my intensive music-theory days to explain why that two and a half-step slide catches my ear the way it does. Listen to it, but check out some of the lyrics:
"You can burn your paper fingers in the ashtray
Place your swollen lips on mine
You can shave your heavy head in my carpeted hallway
Sure for the first time you're wearing the right clothes
Now take them off/Meet me on the band room rug
Tie my right hand to the ride
You can take a live wire into the bath with you
For a feeling you can't find
You can entertain your childhood friends with a tour of the bedroom
Laugh to erase the dirt on your mind
Oh let's move out/Meet me at the motel
Tie my right hand to the Bible"
Emily Haynes is quite the poet.
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